Weekly Christmas Giveaway Tomorrow

I am going to celebrate Christmas in July all month by giving away a holiday item a week each Wednesday. The first one will be TOMORROW at midnight. This is a short turnaround time, but it is only fitting to kick off the month with something from the elves. They work so hard all year at Santa's workshop and don't seem to get much of the glory of Christmas.


No, it is not a car! This is blogland, not The Price is Right. It is a car costume for the holidays that includes two elf ears and an elf hat. This in new in the package and comes with instructions for mounting on your vehicle.

Since there is only a little more than 24 hours to sign up for this one, your chances are good to win this cute little prize. If you are not adventurous enough to drive around with this on your vehicle, you could dress your car up every Rudy Day so the elves could work away on their preparations for Christmas. (some might even be tempted to do this ONLY in the privacy of their closed garage. Not everyone reading this is daring enough for this item. Thus, the quick sign-up time. I am also posting this one on my holiday boards where all the Christmas nuts like myself hangout 24/365.

In order to add your name to this giveaway, leave me a comment here before midnight on Wednesday, July 1. To have two chances to win, also add my Christmas in July meme to your blog. For a third chance in this drawing, give this blog and the weekly giveaways here a shoutout post on your blog. A fourth entry can be added to this drawing by adding your name as a follower of Christmas Memories in My Heart. Refer someone new to my Christmas blog and have them mention your name/blogname for a fifth chance in the drawing.

If you don't have a blog and are entering the drawings for the giveaways, be sure to leave me an email address to contact you. You can just post in the comments that you are sending me the email address. That way you don't have to post yours on the web.

Remember, I will be posting something every day during CIJ. Be sure to stop by often and leave me comments. After each random drawing for the weekly giveaway, all entries will remain in the pool for the following week.

Three or More Tuesday

I love Christmas in July. It is so great to be able to spend the entire month thinking about Christmas and to have thoughts of cooler weather! It has been in the triple digit here this week and the humidity is horrible. My central air doesn't seem to ever shut off.

But, despite the heat, I spent Saturday morning on my usual rounds of garage and estate sales. Well, to be honest, I didn't go to a lot of them, but I did find some cool Christmas items.

In honor of my CIJ celebration that officially kicks off tomorrow, I am showing you three of my Saturday finds. Tam at Gypsy's Corner hosts this Three or More Tuesday event on her blog. So, this week, I am giving it a Christmas flair. Click on her link to see her weekly items and a list of all the participants.

First is this adorable Christmas throw. I paid $3 for it.



Next is a wooden sleigh. I don't know where I will use it, but it is so pretty. It was also $3.



My third Christmas find for the week was a set of dishes featuring snowmen. They can be used even after Christmas for awhile. I got four each of dinner plates, small bowls, larger bowls, salad plates and a salt and pepper shaker. The entire set was $5.



Thanks for visiting me today. Don't forget to stop by Tam's and the other participants this week.

Be sure to come back during July and read my daily posts devoted to all things Christmas. I will have information up tomorrow about a giveaway and the way to enter to receive some exciting Christmas stuff. My Playing Dishes blog will also feature a holiday event this month.

Christmas Lights Found at Estate Sale

We screened in our back porch recently and I have been looking for colored Christmas lights to string around the ceiling. I have boxes of new clear lights and even donated bunches of the large colored lights to GW recently. However, I wanted the small twinkle type lights and this is a hard time of year to find them.
Several weeks ago while out checking out garage and yard sales, I started seeing lots of Christmas decor. I don't know if they were just cleaning house or if this was in anticipation of Christmas in July. I had renewed hope in finding my small colored lights. Then I found two brand new boxes for $1 a box. Yea! However, I still needed more.

On Saturday I went to an estate sale and they had lots of Christmas items. They had about six trees, boxes and boxes of white strands of lights and a couple of boxes of the small colored ones! So, I set about pulling them out and plugging them in to test the bulbs. I got this bunch of about 8 strands for $1 and they all work!



I am so excited. I will be hanging them this evening when it gets a little cooler. Be sure to check out other listings for this week's 2nd Time Around. Diane, our host of this event has some interesting things this week. Take time to visit all the other participants, too, and leave them a comment.

Come back and visit me here during Christmas in July all month and have a chance to win one of my giveaways. I also have a Christmas in July event planned at my Playing Dishes blog.

RUBY TUESDAY

What better way to observe Ruby Tuesday than with a photo of a cute little Santa on the day before Christmas in July starts!



A lot of you know me from my Playing Dishes blog or as printersdevil on various Christmas boards, so I decided that I needed to get my holiday blog up and running to share all the wonderful Christmas in July things about to kick off. After July, I will still be posting at least monthly on Rudy Day on the 25th of each month as I work toward a stress free and organized Christmas 2009.

So, I decided to have a blog giveaway to gather some followers. Many of my friends on the Christmas boards will be following, but I'd love to share my love for Christmas with EVERYONE. Check back tomorrow for information on the giveaway and some other things including an invitation to my birthday party event.

To add a little holiday cheer to this week's Ruby Tuesday, I'm showing off one of my wooden Santa's that usually sites on top of my china hutch. He is such a funny little guy and seems to like his perch high above our heads. Don't forget to click on the link to our gracious host for Ruby Tuesday's event to see this week's photos. New to the site this week is a collection of shout out photos from last week. I love this new idea. You will also find links to all this week's participsnts for more wonderful ruby photos.

Christmas in July Weekly Giveaways

In order to add your name to my weekly Christmas in July giveaway, leave me a comment on one of my posts. Entries for the weekly drawing cut off at midnight on each Wednesday in July. The winner will be announced on Thursday. Be sure to check back to see who wins each week.

To have two chances to win, also add my Christmas in July meme to your blog. For a third chance in this drawing, give this blog and the weekly giveaways here a shoutout post on your blog. A fourth entry can be added to this drawing by adding your name as a follower of Christmas Memories in My Heart. Refer someone new to my Christmas blog and have them mention your name/blogname for a fifth chance in the drawing.

If you don't have a blog and are entering the drawings for the giveaways, be sure to leave me an email address to contact you. You can just post in the comments that you are sending me the email address.My email is www.printersdevil72@yahoo.com
That way you don't have to post yours on the web.

Remember, I will be posting something every day during CIJ. Be sure to stop by often and leave me comments. After each random drawing for weekly giveaway, all entries will remain in the pool for the following week. So, keep coming back for more chances to win.

Week 1 Giveaway on July 2: Car elf costume

Congratulations to Carol Kennon @ My World Anything But Ordinary who won the elf car costume.



Week 2 Giveaway on July 8: Silver metal Santa sleigh with bath products.

Remember all entries for Week 2 must be in by midnight central time on Wednesday, July 8. Entries after that time will go in the next giveaway drawing.

Entries remain in each successive week's drawings.

Good luck! Visit often to add entries for the drawings. You can add comments or memes or shout outs each week. I love to hear from you.

Felecia~printersdevil

IT'S ALMOST CHRISTMAS IN JULY!

I meant to add to this blog every month on Rudy Day, but life got in the way and this is my first post of the year. I haven't totally been a Christmas slacker, since I do have a huge gift closet of items that I picked up on clearance in December and early January.

For those of you not fortunate enough to know about Rudy Day, it is celebrated every month on the 25th in observance of Christmas. It is a great way to plan and get ready for the season without waiting for the big last minute rush. Throughout the year I spend a lot of time visiting with friends at Magical Holiday Home and Our Home for the Holidays and Garden Web Holiday Forum. Each one of these boards is very special to me and I have met many wonderful cyberfriends who also share my love for the holidays. Another great site for Christmas is CEO's Organized Christmas.

I found the OC many years ago when I was searching for ideas for my school holiday parties. I frequented this site around the holidays for a several years before getting really involved in the message boards/forums there. For several years the OC was like a home away from home for me. We shared ideas, bargains, gift ideas, recipes, crafts plans, and generally just became great cyberfriends. Three years ago I started participating in swaps on this board. It may sound crazy, but it was a lot of fun. We had swaps for Christmas in July gifts, secret sister, pampered pet gifts, patio decor, turkey decor, Easter, St. Patty's, Halloween, etc. We signed up and received a partner and swapped items based on the individual swap criteria set by our current swap hostess. We even had several large swaps that involved lots of planning and trust to provide a Christmas stocking filled with little gifts for our partner and Advent Calendar swaps that involved a gift for each day of Advent which is the last Sunday in November right up until Christmas Day.

The first year my two sisters, a niece, my adult daughter and I all participated in the Advent swap. It was so much fun to receive a huge package loaded with individual gifts just for me. Although I love the Advent swap, I think the stocking one is my favorite. I even hosted our first Black Friday Survival Kit Swap. This was a lot of fun. We each had to provide our partner with some kind of container or bag filled with items to help survive shopping on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

My sisters, daughter and nieces all love this day and have been known to leave the house around 4:30 a.m. to get all the early morning bargains and not return home until around midnight. When we do the extreme shopping day we have often wiped out all the local shopping and have gone to the DFW area by around 10 a.m. There have been years that I have gone along for the fun and not even bought anything because I am through shopping by that time. It is a special tradition and time for us.

Here are the photos of the bags that we used for Black Friday Survival Kits that first year. There were six of us in my crew that participated in this first Black Friday Swap. In addition there were about 15 more swappers.

I still have the kit (bag) that I received. I remember that my partner filled a 35mm film cartridge with quarters so I would have them for a soft drink during the day. Those quarters came in handy on the toll road!





DD Tracie with one of the bags. (she looks so different here)



Youngest sis, Tanya, puts the finishing touches on the sixth bag.


When CEO closed all of her forums due to health issues, two new Christmas forums emerged. Many visitors got lost for awhile, but most found their way back to one board or the other and some of us are active on both boards. Although I have never met any of these people IRL, I feel as if some of them are long time friends. We have developed friendships across the miles in cyberspace.

CEO has made some great changes to her Organized Christmas site recently. I think it is very user friendly and is loaded with ideas of crafts, practical inexpensive holiday gifts in a jar, and organizational printouts including her holiday plan to get ready for Christmas which includes a six week countdown and notebook dividers and planning sheets. If you are not familiar with CEO, please click on the link and be prepared to stay awhile and return often.

The other sites are similar in nature, but each has its own unique style and information. Our Home for the Holidays is maintained by a crew of devoted women who celebrate Christmas year round. They are based around the world and their involvement helps us all learn a lot about other countries and their holiday traditions. It is so amazing to me that while we are in a deep freeze around most of the US at Christmas time, many of our board friends are eating their holiday meal by the pool. Again, check out the link and browse through the forums.

The Magical Holiday Home is maintained by Gingerbug. It has many similar boards and is more fast paced with more members frequenting the boards.

Each one of these sites has much more than Christmas activities. Most of us are really more of the holiday nut type instead of just Christmas ones. You will find numerous boards for the major holidays and some like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Easter have big events and on-going yearly posts and activities.

Rudy Day on the 25th is no longer the only monthly observance to us. The Great Pumpkin Day, Turkey Day, Hippity Hoppity Day, Celebrate Me Day are all staples.

For those of you not too sure about celebrating the days above and just interested in some organizational help to get you prepared to enjoy the holidays instead of being frazzled by them, check out these sites. I guarantee there is something there for you. The crafters are amazing. Many of them are crafting and sewing all year for holiday gifts, but this area is great for ideas even for the not so dedicated crafty ones.

I personally love the bargain and gift idea sections. Someone is always letting us know about some amazing bargains or a new twist on basket gifts, family gifts or just some new thing they have read about or made or received.

I think back to the days prior to my finding these wonderful boards and wonder how I survived the holidays.

This past fall I added another holiday board to my close following. This one is the Holiday Forum at Garden Web. This is another great place to share a love of holidays. It is of a different nature, but equally as fun. During the holidays the forum is devoted to Thanksgiving and Christmas decor, especially tables. The rest of the year people discuss any and all holidays and regular posters share photos of tablescapes, new dishes, and thrifting stories and finds, etc. These ladies are superb decorators and I am always amazed at their creations.

I see it is already June 30. That means that Christmas in July is only one day away!!!! I feel much better now that I have started my blog off for the big celebration. My goal is to post something concerning Christmas daily.